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48 Years After The Military Coup, Argentinians Take To The Streets

March 27, 2024 Left Voice. , , , , ,
This Sunday, March 24, tens of thousands of people filled the streets of Buenos Aires and Argentina’s biggest cities to demand “memory, truth, and justice” for the victims of state violence. This annual day of action is held in remembrance of the 30,000 people who were disappeared, murdered, or tortured during the military dictatorship of 1976 to 1983, whose atrocities are most recognizably embodied in the figure of Jorge Rafael Videla, the leader of the military junta that seized control of the government.

Solar Nonprofit Shows Patience Brings Results To Lower-Income Residents

February 15, 2024 Frank Jossi, Next City. , , , ,
One installation at a time, a solar nonprofit that matches socially conscious investors’ cash with lower-income homeowners is spreading the benefits of solar in North Minneapolis. Solstar was formed three years ago by solar entrepreneur Ralph Jacobson following his retirement from IPS Solar, the pioneering Twin Cities’ solar company he founded three decades ago earlier. In his entire career, “I hardly ever had Black customers or Black subcontractors,” Jacobson recalled. Solstar is a collective effort for clean energy leaders in North Minneapolis to address those racial disparities. Jacobson, 71, works his network to persuade wealthy individuals to invest in residential solar installations.

Poverty American Style

June 17, 2018 By Kenneth Surin, Counterpunch , ,
The US by saying that “in practice, the United States is alone among developed countries in insisting that while human rights are of fundamental importance, they do not include rights that guard against dying of hunger, dying from a lack of access to affordable healthcare, or growing up in a context of total deprivation. . . at the end of the day, particularly in a rich country like the USA, the persistence of extreme poverty is a political choice made by those in power. With political will, it could readily be eliminated”.

The Criminalization Of Poverty And What To Do About It

May 15, 2018 Staff, Job Opportunity Task Force , ,
In August 2016, the United States Department of Justice issued a report following its investigation into the policies and practices of the Baltimore Police Department. The report was in response to the 2015 police-involved death of Baltimore resident Freddie Gray and the subsequent unrest that gripped the city. During that historic week in April 2015, the world watched as Baltimore residents took to the streets to call for an end to police brutality and demand reforms in police accountability. In response to the death of Freddie Gray, what surfaced was communal anger and frustration at a dynamic that has plagued Baltimore communities for decades: an overreliance on incarceration and a divestment in economic opportunities. Given growing national attention and local concern around the impact of incarceration on working families, the Job Opportunities Task Force sought to define and determine the extent to which the criminalization of poverty is occurring in Maryland. Indeed, the August 2016 United States Department of Justice report on the Baltimore Police Department created a greater sense of urgency around issues of poverty, race and criminal records.

A New Poor People’s Campaign For Moral Revival

October 26, 2017 Staff, www.poorpeoplescampaign.org , ,
By Staff of Poor People's Campaign - The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival has emerged from more than a decade of work by grassroots community and religious leaders, organizations and movements fighting to end systemic racism, poverty, militarism, environmental destruction & related injustices and to build a just, sustainable and participatory society. The Campaign aims to build a broad and deep national moral movement — rooted in the leadership of poor people and reflecting the great moral teachings — to unite our country from the bottom up. For years we have seen a kind of attention violence towards issues of systemic racism, poverty, and militarism. There was a time when our nation was fighting a war against poverty; now it seems we are waging a war on the poor. Our social fabric is stretched thin by widening income inequality while politicians criminalize the poor, fan the flames of racism and xenophobia to divide the poor, and steal from the poor to give tax breaks to our richest neighbors and budget increases to a bloated military. The twin forces of white supremacy and unchecked corporate greed continue to gain more power and influence, both in statehouses across this nation and at the highest levels of our federal government. Today, one in every two Americans are poor or low-income while millions of children and adults continue to live without access to healthcare, housing, clean water, or good jobs.

Colorado’s Alamosa Municipal Court Tramples On Rights Of Poor People

October 14, 2017 Becca Curry, www.aclu.org , ,
By Becca Curry for ACLU - Municipal judges have incredible power over the lives of the people who enter their courtrooms. When these judges refuse to follow the law and instead run their courtrooms like fiefdoms, they can ruin lives. This is starkly true for people already living in poverty who must appear in Colorado’s Alamosa Municipal Court. In our new investigative report, “Justice Derailed,” we examine Alamosa’s local court, which operates under the sole leadership of Judge Daniel Powell. This court stands out for the frequency and seriousness of its constitutional abuses, which most often affect low-income individuals. The striking inequity in treatment between defendants with means and those without reveals the unfairness of a system that is supposed to be just, but which is actually the opposite. While Alamosa is the focus of this report, it is not alone in its abuses. Colorado has more than 200 local city courts that deal mostly with low-level offenses, which are often tied to drug addiction and poverty. For six years, the ACLU of Colorado has been investigating injustices in municipal courts. We have challenged debtors’ prison practices through letters sent to several municipalities and settlements reached in Colorado Springs and Aurora. We also brought evidence to the state capitol resulting in legislation to address debtors’ prisons, the lack of counsel in municipal courts, and lengthy waits in jail to see a municipal judge when an individual cannot afford to post bond. While courts are meant to address violations of the law, many municipal judges violate the law themselves by abusing their power.

What A Revived Poor People’s Campaign Needs To Do

August 26, 2017 Amanda Abrams, www.yesmagazine.org , ,
By Amanda Abrams for Yes! Magazine - In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. and his allies started the Poor People’s Campaign, a movement meant to improve the lives of low-income Americans. But King was assassinated a few months before its political actions officially kicked off, and the campaign never reached its full potential. Fifty years later, Rev. William Barber, head of the North Carolina NAACP, is joining other religious and activist leaders to launch a new Poor People’s Campaign, picking up where King left off. Although King is universally associated with civil rights and the struggles of African Americans, the original Poor People’s Campaign was an inclusive effort to alleviate the poverty of Americans of all races. And today’s organizers say that goal is fundamental to the new campaign as well. In this deeply polarized socio-political climate, the message is an attractive one, emphasizing not left or right, but a collective moral obligation to allow everyone a fair shot at a decent life. Barber’s inclusive language certainly succeeded in North Carolina, where the popular Moral Mondays protests he spearheaded in 2013–14 helped elect a Democratic governor last year. But for the new movement to gain national traction, it will need to appeal not only to African Americans and progressive Whites, who currently make up Barber’s base, but also draw in poor and working-class Whites, too.

Rev. Barber: America Needs A New Poor People’s Campaign

May 18, 2017 William J. Barber, II, www.thinkprogress.org ,
By William J. Barber, II for Think Progress - In a spectacle of religious hypocrisy last week, preachers who say so much about what God says so little — and so little about what God says so much — stood in the Rose Garden as a backdrop for President Donald Trump’s executive order on “religious liberty.” As they celebrated this administration’s willingness to let them use religious freedom as an excuse to force their “values” on someone else, Trump pointed to the legacy of the African-American church as an example of faith in public life. In every con, there’s a grain of truth, whether the person who is speaking knows it or now. I know the prophetic African American church tradition that grew up on the edges of plantations and spoke clearly for the first time into this nation’s public life when Hariet Tubman and Frederick Douglass first escaped from slavery to freedom. On my mother and father’s side of our family tree combined, I count more than eight hundred years of public ministry in that tradition. We do not know how to preach without engaging the powers in the public square. Whenever I open the Scriptures, I read about a God who hears the cry of the suffering and stands on the side of the oppressed for justice.

Justice Department Says Poor Can’t Be Held When They Can’t Afford Bail

August 23, 2016 Pete Williams, www.nbcnews.com ,
By Pete Williams for NBCNews - Holding defendants in jail because they can't afford to make bail is unconstitutional, the Justice Department said in a court filing late Thursday — the first time the government has taken such a position before a federal appeals court. It's the latest step by the Obama administration in encouraging state courts to move away from imposing fixed cash bail amounts and jailing those who can't pay.

A Poor People’s Movement In The Rustbelt

July 25, 2016 Jack Shuler, www.truth-out.org/a> ,
By Jack Shuler for Truth Out - When Chris Wills got out of prison, he could not find a job. He applied, but no one would hire him because of his record. And then he started using drugs again. In a moment of desperation, he went to talk with a friend who ran programs in the local jail. His friend didn't tell him to just get clean. He didn't tell him to just get a job. He gave him some advice that, in the moment, Wills thought was just weird. His friend told him to go meet with some community organizers from a group called the Newark Think Tank on Poverty.

Marching On The DNC: Interview With Cheri Honkala

July 10, 2016 Ann Garrison, www.counterpunch.org , ,
By Ann Garrison for Counterpunch. It was a struggle but we were adamant and told the ACLU over and over again for 48 hours that we would not change our permit request, and we have won the right to march on the south side of city hall at 3:00 o’clock, going all the way up Broad Street to the front door of the Democratic National Convention. And so we’re hoping that anybody that was afraid before will turn out in droves and join us. Our march has turned into a real symbol of the fight for political independence from the two corporate controlled parties. And I think we’re gonna look back and see this as an important historical marker. It’s really important that people understand that our march begins at 3:00 on the south side of city hall, because the Democratic Party is going to stop at absolutely nothing to make sure that the voices of poor and other front line communities are not heard in the Democratic National Convention.

Redistribution Of Health Care From The Poor To The Wealthy

July 8, 2016 Samuel L. Dickman et al, www.hpnhp.org , ,
By Samuel L. Dickman et al for PNHP - US medical spending growth slowed between 2004 and 2013. At the same time, many Americans faced rising copayments and deductibles, which may have particularly affected lower-income people. To explore whether the health spending slowdown affected all income groups equally, we divided the population into income quintiles. We then assessed trends in health expenditures by and on behalf of people in each quintile using twenty-two national surveys carried out between 1963 and 2012.

Mumia: Water & Other Capitalist Crimes Against The Poor

February 15, 2016 Mumia Abu-Jamal, www.counterpunch.org , ,
By Mumia Abu-Jamal for Counter Punch - The adage that there are different systems of justice for rich and poor, Black and white, is horrifically confirmed in Flint, Michigan, where the white supremacist, capitalist state poisoned a majority Black and poor population. Yet, in U.S. society there is no punishment to fit such a crime. “In Michigan’s prisons, there ain’t a single prisoner who committed a more vicious crime than the Governor of that state.” “The state’s emergency manager created an emergency.”

Poor More Likely To Live Near Chemical Hazard

January 31, 2016 Amanda Starbuck, www.foreffectivegov.org , , , ,
By Amanda Starbuck for Center for Effective Government. The Center for Effective Government released a new report and interactive map to coincide with the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. The report demonstrates that the struggle for social justice is far from over. Across the country people of color and the poor are disproportionately impacted by chemical facility hazards, and in many areas, the amount of inequality is profound. We mapped all 12,000+ facilities reporting to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Risk Management Program (RMP). These facilities use large enough amounts of extremely hazardous chemicals that they must submit risk and response plans to the EPA. Communities near these facilities face the greatest danger from a toxic chemical release or explosion and are often exposed to toxic emissions on a daily basis. We compared the demographics of people living within one mile of these dangerous facilities to the rest of the population. The results are stark.

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Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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